


Life Itself

by Winterstar



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, Humor, Hurt Steve Rogers, M/M, Okay Not Really, Pizza, Pre-Slash, Protective Tony Stark, Team as Family, and one was death, one was life, twist - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 21:01:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11906145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: Steve really likes to take a bath. Tony needs to find out why. It's for science....Answer to my cap-ironman bingo prompt 'hot water'





	Life Itself

**Author's Note:**

> Warning - this is weird

A weary sensation of numbness swept over him as the armor shifted off of his aching muscles. If there wasn’t another call out for a decade it would be too soon as far as Tony was concerned. Forming the Avengers had been a great idea but the fact remained that having a small group of people the only ones to combat threats that the regular military around the world couldn’t handle seemed a little understaffed to him. He walked down the platform into his penthouse in the Tower. He could already hear the rest of the team starting to congregate. After missions, they’d taken the Quin Jet back to the landing pad and ended up gathered around the table, eating, drinking, and generally relaxing while they tried to forget the horrors they’d just experienced.

Both Steve and Thor sat back and watched the rest of the team with what Tony came to understand as knowing eyes. They both had war experience, comrades in arms. They both understood the need to decompress even if they didn’t use that term. But eventually the same thing happened all the time. All the time. 

Tony joined the team as they settled in their chairs in the common lounge area. Clint was half asleep on the phone while Nat sat on the floor next to the recliner he laid in. She had her head on his lap. Clint muttered replies to whomever he spoke to and every now and again Nat would chime in as if she knew the person. Asking vague questions and smiling every now and again. 

Bruce spent the time with his own demons, but luckily long ago Steve convinced him that he could better drive them out with a group of friends. This time he sat with Thor as well and tried to teach him some card game that Tony thought he probably just made up on the fly. Thor scowled every now and again but tried to follow the rules even as he drank his Asgardian mead. 

Steve observed his team with a certain detachment and after the pizza was consumed and the team members were buzzed on a bit of beer and wine, Steve did the predictable. Always the same damned thing. Every time.

“Well, I’m calling it a night,” he said and slapped his knees as he stood up. “Gonna go take a bath. Night.” 

No one really moved, just waved to him as he exited. Tony sat there, watching him as he slipped away. A bath. Every damned time. “Why is it always a bath?” Tony said out loud once Steve was out of ear shot.

“Why’s it matter?” Nat asked and sat up to reach for her third slice of pizza. “He likes baths. Who cares?”

“Did you happen to notice how often he takes baths?” Tony asked. She only narrowed her eyes at him like she was focusing a microscope to dissect him. “Like three times a day at least.”

“What troubles me is that you counted,” Bruce muttered from the couch as he flipped a card over to have Thor laugh and point which only left Bruce confused and a little green.

“Really?” Tony looked around the room. The pizza boxes with the congealed cheese on the tops, the empty beer bottles, the tired faces. “No one else noticed that he takes baths like all the time?”

Clint, who had long since finished his call, rolled his head to stare at Tony. “Why do you care?”

“It’s weird. Doesn’t he know how to use the shower? Maybe someone should teach him how to use the shower. Didn’t they have showers in the 40s?” Tony just wanted someone to pay attention. What if the old man didn’t know how to shower? It seemed pretty incomprehensible, but possible.

“Our good Captain showers. I have seen him use the shower on the combat floor,” Thor said and then huffed and he threw down a card. “See I have used the Norn card on you.”

“Well, good, does that mean the game is over?” Bruce asked and made a little whimpering noise. How did it become a Thor directed game and not a Bruce one, Tony would never know.

Tony glanced around the room and realized he was getting no sympathy or any interest from his team mates. He gathered up his plate, and his empty beer bottle. “I better not see a mess in here tomorrow morning.” He left via the kitchen, tossing his plate in the dishwasher and the bottle in the recycle bin. 

Maybe he was just being overly curious about Steve’s weird habits. Maybe he had bad body odor since the serum or something weird like that. Who knew? He decided it wasn’t worth figuring out. Everyone had their quirks, and Captain America’s happened to be that he liked to be squeaky clean. Or maybe he just masturbated so much that he felt dirty about it and thought he needed to boil the evilness out of his pores or something. Tony giggled at that one and went back to his floor. He was bone tired. 

He really didn’t think anything of it for the next few days. Okay, anytime he was in the common areas of the Tower and Steve happened to be around, Tony had to admit he did try and sniff him a few times.

“What are you doing?” Steve asked as he sat on the couch with a book – probably some dull strategy book or something about team building. Steve was big into team building exercises. 

Tony stood up. As he passed by the couch, he’d leaned down to smell Steve. “What?”

“You just sniffed me,” Steve said and turned around to study Tony. “Is there a problem?”

“I didn’t sniff you.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I did not.” Tony marched away. Indignant. He made sure to move as quickly as possible away from the lounge and ended up in the kitchen making a sandwich he really didn’t want. He should have just escaped to his workshop but Tony had a tendency to linger at the wrong times and places.

“So, you making that sandwich for yourself?” 

Tony turned around to see Steve with his arms crossed, back against the door frame, trying his best to look casual but not really pulling it off. “Yes.” He layered on the deli meats, the cheeses. He even tripled it with extra slices of bread. 

“You’re going to eat that?” Steve said and strolled into the kitchen. Some might say that Steve Rogers happened to be shy and adorable, but Tony knew him to be sassy and devious at times. “You’re sure. Because last I knew you only ate cheeseburgers as sandwiches.” He actually did the air quotes thing as he spoke. “Those were the only real sandwiches in your book.”

“I don’t like what you’re implying,” Tony said – because truthfully he didn’t technically have a decent come back and so he just threw that out there and then stomped away. He left the monstrosity of a sandwich on the counter. As he left Steve called after him.

“Are you going to eat this or not?” 

Tony just slipped away to the sanctity of his workshop. When he thought about it, Steve didn’t stink. In fact he smelled good, really good. Tony liked his smell. It did things to him. And he shouldn’t think that way. Steve was off limits. Completely off limits.

He had to put it out of his head. The wanting to kiss him, right at the edge of his collar with the little shaved hairs on his neck rubbed against it, right there, Tony had to squash that down. Steve never showed any interest in anyone. Ever. He was strictly about the job. Even when Tony told him that all work and no play made Steve a cranky ass. Steve only grunted and went back to work. The world did not need saving all the time. 

So Tony busied himself with a new project to get his mind off of the scent of Steve. Except it didn’t work because his project consisted of a calendar and checking off how many times Steve took a bath. Most days it looked to be about two times a day. Some days it was three. On bad days it happened to be five. How could anyone spend that much time in the tub?

After a month of collecting data, mostly surreptitiously with JARVIS’ help, Tony thought it might be time to brave confronting Steve on the subject. But just as he found the courage to go to Steve’s floor, the alarm went off and the team suited up to race across continents to fight off the latest and greatest assault by super evil (at least that’s what Tony called it as a swarm of AI controlled weapons tried to take over a small village in Greece of all places). Whomever was in charge of the demented weapons didn’t know anything about intelligence artificial or otherwise. It took half the day to get things under control and to root out the group of just out of their teens gang that decided to rig up the AI and the weapons to ‘see what would happen’. It seemed a shame to cart them off to prison. Steve gave them a stern look but still ended up arresting them and turning them over to the local authorities. 

Returning home to the Tower, the team dispersed quickly with Steve mumbling about going to take a bath again. Tony only rolled his eyes and somehow ended up following him onto the elevator. Steve only smiled at him but it was half hearted and small. He rolled his shoulders a few times as the floors ticked by and then – as he stepped off the lift and gave Tony a quick wave – he shivered. Tony would have missed it, but he literally caught the glimpse of Steve’s lower lip quiver and he thought he even heard a clack of teeth against teeth before the car doors closed and the elevator continued to his floor. 

He tried to make sense of it. Tried to put the facts and pieces together. “JARVIS belay that order, take me to my workshop.”

In seconds he entered the workshop and called to JARVIS, “Pull up the calendar, the bath calendar. Also Steve’s workout schedule, the missions we’ve been on, and also add in the food. How many calories does Steve consume?”

“In general sir, or for each of the days?”

“Each,” Tony said. “Also do you have bio stats of all of the Avengers on hand?” 

“Yes sir.”

Tony waited and tapped on the console as the blue holographic images started to emerge in front of him. The data streamed by and it revealed nothing. Steve did eat an extraordinary amount of food, he slept for about 6 hours a day, worked out twice a day, and took at least that many baths usually more.

“Why the baths? Why?”

“Sir, perhaps you are getting a little obsessed by this. Perhaps it would be best to just ask Captain Rogers yourself?” 

Tony knew that wouldn’t do. Steve and Tony rubbed each other the wrong way – of course, Tony thought about rubbing Steve the right way but that was just a juvenile dream. Steve stayed to himself a lot. He liked to hang out with Thor sometimes when Thor was on Earth and not visiting Jane. He liked to talk with Natasha quietly in the evenings. She never shared his secrets. Steve stayed clear of Tony most of the time. Once in a while Tony would catch him looking, contemplating, but nothing more. Steve would always quickly look away and that was it.

So when the call from SHIELD came that they wanted Steve and Tony to testify for the Subcommittee on Defense on the Hill and only Steve and Tony, it came as no surprise that Steve’s stoic response was more professional and less friendly than Tony hoped. “I think it should be all of the team, sir.”

“Well, the rest of the team haven’t been requested.” Fury had his arms folded across his chest and he glared at them from the screen in the main common room of the Tower. 

“While that’s truly complimentary, I think we should present a united front,” Steve replied. “Or at least Natasha-.”

“No, Captain, you can handle this. You and Stark. You’ll be on that plane in two hours Captain.”

As the screen went dark, Steve turned around and faced Tony. He considered him with a slight look of panic laced with disdain. “I have to go pack.” He raced away but not before Tony yelled after him.

“Going to bathe before we take off?”

Steve only stumbled a bit in his rush to get away. With only a thrown look of disapproval over his shoulder, Steve disappeared from the common lounge and Tony was left with a sense of déjà vu. As he started toward his own room an idea, an evil idea formulated in his brain.

“Oh this is too good,” he said and clapped his hands. He felt a little like the Grinch planning on stealing all of Christmas from Whoville. He cackled and said, “JARVIS, find out what hotel that SHIELD put us in book all the rooms, and make sure SHIELD can only put us up in a single hotel room.”

“Sir?”

“Gonna find out what the hell is going on,” Tony said. All the while JARVIS jabbered on about how this plan couldn’t work considering the number of hotels in DC. Tony refused to listen. He had to invoke a security measure to force JARVIS to do his bidding. Sometimes, JARVIS could be such a dad. The plan would work and he would find out what the hell was going on. Did Captain America stink? Did he have a bath fetish? What the hell was it? The plan was brilliant.

Except it wasn’t.

When the plane landed, the escorts arrived and hustled them to the Hill to meet with various Congress representatives and Senators before the big inquiry. Steve glared at Tony every now and again to try and telegraph to him to keep his trap shut. It didn’t work and by the time they were grill in front of the Defense subcommittee for the Senate, the whole enterprise of the Avengers team balanced on shaky ground. Getting out of there with microphones and camera flashes in their face felt worse than fighting aliens. Fury had already informed them that there would be a second day of a repeat performance of the Spanish Inquisition so they left the Hill to go to their hotel. Getting to the hotel, they tried to check in and that’s when Tony remembered that he’d set it up so that they would have to share a room. 

“Only one room?” Steve asked and made a face that was half way between bewilderment and outright terror. 

“Yeah, we can do it. Right, Capsicle. No problem?” Tony said and the woman behind the desk at the hotel look between them and then frowned. “Oh I don’t mean do it, do it. But come on you can’t say you don’t want to tap that ass.”

She blanched and Steve blushed so red that Tony thought he might have a heart attack and die right there. The woman – her name was Gayle with a y not an I and an e at the end – cleared her throat and stared at her screen before saying, “We do have the one room. It’s a one bedroom suite. There’s a pull out.” She looked at Steve with her doe eyes and begged him silently to take Tony away. He’d recognized that look anywhere, he’d seen it before – many times.

“I guess that will have to work,” Steve mumbled and accepted the two access keys. Tony snatched his and scowled at both of them.

“I don’t see what you have to worry about. I’m the one slumming it. I’ve never been in a one bedroom hotel room in my life.” Tony marched to the elevator pulling his suitcase along with him. He should have insisted that Happy accompany them, but he was out with Pepper doing whatever.

Steve paused a moment before following Tony into the elevator with his own luggage. 

“Floor five. Christ it isn’t even on the top floor,” Tony muttered and silently cursed JARVIS. He did this on purpose to foul Tony’s plans. 

Steve remained silent, only gazing up at the ceiling and then down at his shoes. Tony began to realize he’d made a huge mistake. He had to spend time with this guy. Like hours and hours. 

“Wanna get something to eat?” Tony asked. 

Steve considered him and then said, “Maybe later.”

“Thought you’d be hungry with all that muscle and serum running around in there,” Tony said and knocked him in the arm as the elevator stopped.

“I’m good,” Steve said and left the elevator walking to the room without waiting for Tony. 

This did not bode well – at all. Tony joined Steve in the room, the door almost closing on him as he entered. Steve glanced around the suite. It was small but efficient. The art and the furniture wholesale and boring. Steve went to couch and put his bag to the side. “I’ll take the pullout.”

“Nonsense we can-.” He stopped as he entered the bedroom. It wasn’t a king, but a queen. Very tight fit. “We can share, if you want.”

Steve didn’t say anything he just froze as he saw the bathroom. 

“What?” Tony turned. There was no tub. It was just a shower stall.

“Nothing,” Steve said and there was the slightest detectable tremor to his hand as he pushed his hair away from his forehead. “Nothing, it’s good. We can- you can take the bed. I’ll just be on the pullout.” He actually went to the couch and sat down as if staking his claim.

“Okay,” Tony said and then put his luggage in the closet. He waited for several minutes before he ventured out of the bedroom and back into the main area of the suite. 

Steve sat there, staring at the black television screen. He looked numb, tired, and scared. Where there had been a red flush of blood to his face only minutes before, now it paled, drained of all color. His shoulders hunched downward and he looked stunned.

“I mean you’ve seen a room without a bath tub before, right? You know what a shower is, right?”

Steve clenched his jaw and Tony saw the little twitch of the muscle. “Yeah I know what a shower is. I just-. SHIELD always. They always make sure.”

“Make sure you have a bath tub? Who the hell needs a bath tub other than parents with toddlers?” Tony asked and he genuinely wanted to know but the snarky comment didn’t come off right and Steve shut down – immediately, and completely. 

He gathered up his bag, tugged at his jacket, and then started toward the door.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“Somewhere I can relax.”

“You can’t relax here?” Tony said and it seemed a ridiculous come back but then he glimpsed the way that Steve’s skin looked – even paler than it did moments ago. And his lips. His lips were losing color as well. Tony grabbed at his jacket sleeve. “You can stay here. You can have the bed. What’s having a crick in the back anyway? It will go away. Come on, you can have the bed. We can go to dinner, you can have real sandwiches if you want.”

“No, I have to leave.” Steve yanked at his arm but Tony went for it again – this time he happened to grasp his bare wrist – and then jerked away. Steve startled and shook his head. “Don’t. Don’t worry about it.”

“Christ on a cracker, you’re fucking freezing.”

Steve pulled his arm away from Tony and went to reach for the door. He stopped before he got there and said, “Please don’t tell anyone.”

“Tell anyone what, that you have the worst circulation ever?” Tony asked, and he knew it wasn’t that. He knew he was standing at the edge of the cliff and any minute the truth like a soft breeze would knock him over and he’d plummet to the Earth’s shattering ground.

“Don’t tell anyone. Please.” Steve said and closed his eyes. 

Tony couldn’t stop himself. He should have been able to stop himself but he reached up and touched Steve’s throat, right where his carotid artery should be – pumping away. 

He jumped away from Steve. “Nothing. Fuck, fuck, fuck.” How could JARVIS not have known? How could the data lie to him? “How? What?”

“Don’t be frightened, please don’t be frightened,” Steve said but Tony couldn’t help it. He started to back track, stepping farther into the room. Steve abandoned his luggage and followed Tony by only a step into the suite again. “Please don’t be frightened.”

“What? By the fact you’re as cold as death, by the fact that you’re fucking lips are turning blue. That you’re face looks sunken.” Tony tensed. “By the fact you’re a fucking zombie?”

Steve stopped and sighed. He actually breathed. Did dead people breathe? “I prefer undead.”

“Undead? That’s like a god damned vampire. Are you going to suck my blood?” Tony asked and then cursed again. “Fuck and I wanted to suck your fucking dick.”

“Ton- wait, what?” Steve tilted his head and there was the faintest rosy color coming back to his cheeks. “Really?”

“No, not really,” Tony said. The idea of fucking a dead guy twisted in his gut, the revulsion gagging him. He coughed it out. “Christ. Not now. You’re dead.”

“Undead,” Steve said and the disappointment was high.

His brain fired impossibly fast and he went over the months since the Chitauri invasion. “Who else knows?”

Steve swallows and a visible shudder went through him. “Fury, of course. Coulson did know. And Nat, she knows. But no one else. You’re not supposed to know. Nat’s my wing man, wing woman. I don’t know. She usually follows me around to make sure things go well.”

“Where is she now?” Tony snapped. “Now I have to deal with this. Are you going to fall apart? Like jaws hanging off, skin flaying, that kind of thing?”

“It’s not like that. This isn’t a zombie apocalypse and not the Walking Dead. I have a condition.” A condition that was obviously painful by the way Steve’s expression deteriorated as they stood in the hotel room.

“Undead is not a medical condition,” Tony replied and why was he fighting about this. It was preposterous.

Steve quaked and the pallor of his skin turned a translucent blue. “It’s called the dusk of death. Not undead, not zombie.” He tucked his hands under his arms. “I manage it. All the time. It’s okay.”

“Well you’re not managing it well now. How the hell did JARVIS not pick up that you don’t have a pulse?” Tony asked. His mind flew and he couldn’t parse all the different jigsaw puzzle pieces.

“SHIELD hacked JARVIS,” Steve said and closed his eyes for a minute. “Months ago.”

“What? How the hell didn’t I know-.”

“It doesn’t matter right now,” Steve replied through gritted teeth. His whole body shook and Tony couldn’t tell if it was with rage or fear or cold. “Right now I have to get to hot water.”

“Hot water – that’s going to help your lack of pulse,” Tony said and couldn’t believe he was having this conversation with a _dead_ person.

“I have a pulse. Just low, and it gets lower the colder I get,” Steve said and he toppled. Right in front of Tony, he collapsed to his knees and didn’t even flinch. “I need hot water.”

Tony didn’t move to help him. Just stood there staring and hearing all kind of alarms in his own head. “There’s a shower.” It’s all he could manage to get out.

“Shower doesn’t work,” Steve said and his arms were curled up, his fists under his chin. “Have to be subm-sub-.” He faltered then and didn’t finish because he looked more and more like a damned statue. 

“Are you? Are you freezing or something,” Tony said. This didn’t make any sense. “There’s no such thing as the dusk of death.”

Steve didn’t have words to say to Tony, because he _couldn’t_ speak. He clambered as well as he could, struggling to move, to beg. Steve pawed at him, but Tony stayed out of physical contact. 

None of this made sense. Natasha knew – why wasn’t she here. How long had it been since Steve bathed? How come it was happening now? He watched as Steve dropped in front of him like a rock to the carpeted floor. Only a slight whimper came out of him. 

Well, that’s a liability. He supposed they all had liabilities. What was he without his suit? Or Hawkeye without his bow? Or Bruce without anger? Or Thor without Mjolnir? Of course, Nat would still be Nat – he assumed. But they all had liabilities. Was this Steve’s – that he was technically still dead?

Tony knelt on the floor next to the Captain. He touched his face. Ice. Like dry ice and his finger felt like it stuck. SHIELD had pulled off the greatest con of all time. Brought Captain America back – but he was never really back. Was he? Right before him the transformation to something _other_ became increasingly clear and horrifying. This man wasn’t alive. He was perched on the precipice of death and life. Something deep and piercing hit Tony in the chest and he could barely breathe himself. The suffering, the pain so evident on Steve’s face spread over Tony and he wanted to mourn for what was and what could have been. It had been a fantasy, a fairy tale all along that Captain America could survive the ice. No one could survive that. Not even the serum could truly help him. It just left him in this horrible purgatory.

Before he could reach for his phone to call on JARVIS to help him, the door swung open and slammed against the wall. Natasha and six SHIELD agents came in. She flicked a quick glance at Tony but then ordered the STRIKE crew. “Pick him up and bring him to room 505. There’s a bath already waiting for him. Don’t say a fucking world about this to anyone or else I will remove your trachea myself.”

They went to work without any hesitation. They hoisted Steve up into their arms and carried him away. The hallway was empty and dark. Tony suspected that Natasha had something to do with it. She watched them deliver the Captain to a room that Fury was standing in the door and then she came back into the room with Tony.

“Well, I suppose you know now.” Her arms were crossed. He wondered if she would remove his trachea.

He swallowed hard. “Yeah, I do.”

“Never know how to leave well enough alone, do you?” Natasha started to scope out the room. Checking it for bugs or other devices. 

“He’s dead.”

“No, not technically. He’s what called -.”

“Dusk of death or whatever. That is not a medical term,” Tony said and finally climbed to his feet. His knees wobbled but he stayed upright.

“No, but it’s a paranormal medical term. You should know by now that not all conditions are understood by common medicine. Look at Bruce,” Natasha said as she continued her sweep of the bedroom. “You should have left it alone.”

“How the hell did SHIELD hack JARVIS?” 

“Back years ago when you were dying we did it,” Natasha said and stopped her search. She seemed satisfied that no one had been eavesdropping. 

“So all this time you had the plans for Iron Man-.”

“No,” Natasha said. “Seems you have some high security on that. We were able to hack into your medical monitoring system and some basic surveillance systems. That’s it. If you don’t believe me, you can come down to SHIELD and check it out. You have some very excellent security.”

“Apparently not as excellent as I thought,” Tony said and started to pace. The nervous energy pumping through his arteries felt like fire, felt like heat, felt like an explosion. “So Cap is actually a real capsicle. Like a zombie or something.”

Natasha sighed. “No. He’s alive but not. That’s the best way to put it. He has a pulse - sometimes, he breathes, he eats, but none of it does him any good. He’s voraciously hungry and cold all the time. He may sleep but it doesn’t help. He can never get any satisfaction at all. He’s hanging between worlds.”

“Jesus,” Tony whispered and crumpled down onto the couch that Steve had just been sitting in. He thought about getting off the couch, leaping away from the contamination, and then he recalled how Steve had reached out to him, beseeching him for help and he stepped away. “I really liked him as a kid. I crushed on him. You know.”

Natasha sat down next to Tony, her arm over his shoulders. “He’s still here with us. We might find a cure for him. He could still be alive someday.”

“Someday,” Tony said with a hitched raspy breath. It hurt too damned much to think about it. It was supposed to be a joke. No bath for Steve. How would he ever deal with having to shower? It was supposed to be funny. 

“If it’s any consolation, he likes you, too. A lot.” Natasha tightened her grasp of his shoulder. “He only stayed away because he thinks he doesn’t deserve anything, or anyone in his present condition. He doesn’t want to inflict it on anyone else.”

That feeling, Tony knew that feeling well. He touched the arc reactor in his chest. He’d pushed Pepper away because he didn’t want her to have to deal with his heart issues, his lung issues, his mental illness. The idea that his idol, his once and present crush dealt with the same issue hurt like hell. He pressed a hand on his chest. 

“Can I? Can I see him?” Tony asked. 

Natasha weighed his request and then after a moment she nodded. “Only for a short time. When this happens to him he usually suffers quite a bit. You need to give him time to recover.”

“Okay,” Tony said and he had no idea what any of that meant. How could someone dead suffer? What did it mean to be in that state, forever teetering between life and death? A dance of death and life. 

She got to her feet and waited for him to move. It took a moment for him to gather his thoughts, to figure out that not only did he fight alongside a demi-god, and a big green rage monster, but also a Captain from a lost era trapped between life and death. Once he settled it in his brain (but how could he really) he stood up and nodded to her. Natasha led him down the hallway to the appointed room. 

As he walked into the room, the heat and humidity hit him in the face. He nearly went into a breathing attack because of the thickness of the air. Though there was a sweet fragrance and he furrowed his brows. One of the STRIKE team – Rumlow if Tony’s memory served him well – said, “That’s him. As he comes back and smells like that. Go figure.”

Tony frowned. It seemed oddly intimate and a violation of Steve’s privacy to be casually talking about him. Tony recognized the smell; he’d dreamed of that smell. 

Fury came out of the bedroom. He still had that long leather coat on and a scowl on his face. 

“If you knew this would happen, why did you let him go?” Tony asked. The darkened room, the heat all burrowed into Tony’s heart, into his bones like a disease. “Why would you do this to him?”

“I’ll answer the last first,” Fury said. There was rage in his eye. “Because we needed him. We needed someone to bring your group together. You think we just thawed him out last week. Think again. We found him ages ago and kept him frozen because we could tell he wasn’t fully alive, he wasn’t fully dead. But we needed a fulcrum, a rallying point. You needed a captain and not just any captain, you needed Captain America. So we did this to save the Earth, so that you would be a team. You needed Captain America.”

A surge of anxiety mixed with an absolute knowledge that Fury was right raced through him. He wanted to deny it, but the truth – well Tony liked to hide from the truth. Not this time. Not this time at all. 

“And as for the rest, you weren’t supposed to change all of the reservations. Unfortunately we don’t control your AI. If you hadn’t touched the reservations and changed them to a single room with only a shower, he would have been in a bath tub and fine. None of this would have happened.” 

Tony didn’t care. This wasn’t his fault. “So how many baths does he need?”

“Two, three or more if it’s been a particularly strenuous day,” Natasha filled in as she walked by them to the bathroom. He watched her go and then turned back to Fury.

Something dropped, hard and fast, inside and nothing else mattered. “So, is he dying?”

“Not this time,” Fury said and his voice softened. “If anything, Stark, if you could do this for me, if you could be his friend. It would help. He needs someone.”

Tony thought about his rejection of Steve in his most vulnerable moment. “I don’t know if he would want that.”

“You could try,” Fury said. He waved to the STRIKE team and they exited from the room. “They aren’t his friends. He has no one else who knows but me, and Natasha. We’re more like his keepers. He could use someone who really cares.”

“And I care?”

“Don’t you?” Fury stepped into the bedroom. “Let’s go.”

Natasha joined them. She smiled small and tenderly at Tony before she left with Fury. It took several minutes before Tony moved, before he found himself passing through the bedroom into the adjoining bathroom. Even as he entered his nerves tingled with disbelief. But he stepped up to the tub. He pushed aside the shower curtain. 

Completely submerged and naked, Steve curled up into the fetal position. He looked like a parody of a fetus in the womb. Tony couldn’t parse how such a big man could make himself so tiny. But he shouldn’t be surprised he’d seen Steve ball himself up to hide behind his shield too many times to count. As Tony gazed on him, he stayed unmoving and quiet under the water. Tony half expected him to drown. But then he wasn’t really alive, was he? And that trembled through Tony until his eyes teared up and he realized everything he lost. 

After what seemed like an eternity, quite suddenly Steve jerked and pulled his head out of the water. He gulped and gulped for air like a man half starved for it. He shuddered and tumbled down into the water again, only to struggle for air again. Tony went to his side, helped to keep him up, hanging over the side of the tub. He shivered in Tony’s arms. He wasn’t cold anymore. It was something else.

Grief.

Unrelenting grief.

He sobbed in slow and quiet weeping. Tony fell to his knees and held him. He shushed him and told him it would be okay. He didn’t know if it was true or not. But what could he tell Steve who was trapped between worlds? Between what could be and what can never be? He found himself kissing Steve’s head and promising him it would be okay.

“Don’t worry, we’re here for you,” Tony whispered. “I’m here for you.” And it was true. 

Steve clasped Tony’s hand, and he held on as if he clung onto life itself.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Told ya'


End file.
